Chris Sims

If you're the kind of person who keeps up on a very specific kind of news, then you might remember that last year, the city of Yokohama, Japan was host to one of the greatest events in human history. For nine days, Yokohama played host to over a thousand Pikachus, marching through the streets and, one assumes, tempting Team Rocket into what would have been the biggest heist of their careers.

Sadly, we do not live in a perfect world where this is happening literally all the time, but on August 8, the electric Pokemon will return to Yokohama for another nine-day celebration... and this time, they will be dancing. The event's official name is "Dancing? An Outbreak Of Pikachus," which is equal parts whimsical and terrifying, and thanks to an instructional video, you can learn to dance along!

I realize that it's something I should've been reading all along, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally sat down and caught up with Hellboy In Hell, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, it's great. If you're similarly behind, the book follows Hellboy after his death preventing the battle of Armageddon and his descent into Hell, where he has to struggle with a destiny that would see him sat upon the throne of Lucifer and ruling over the armies of the damned. So, you know, the usual.

It seems like I have pretty good timing, too, because in a few weeks, the book returns as Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart bring us the second arc of Hellboy's posthumous adventures, "The Hounds of Pluto." Check out a preview below!

Q: Can you explain how Lex Luthor was elected President? Donald Trump might need some pointers. -- @ASaltzberg

A: President Lex! Now there's a story that I haven't thought about in a while - and just for context, I'm someone who thinks about Harold, the hunchbacked mechanic that Batman used to keep in his basement to fix up the Batmobile, at least once a week. Looking back, it seems like a very weird story, an ultimately forgettable new direction for a villain that never really went anywhere, but at the time, it definitely felt like it was a big deal.

At first glance, DC Bombshells seems like it's operating on a pretty weird premise. It is, after all, a digital comic based on a line of statues that reimagine the company's heroines with retro, pinup-inspired designs, and while a lot of them have been pretty great, trying to create a narrative based around an aesthetic seems like a tough task. In practice, though, Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage don't just rise to the occasion, they demolish it.

In a summer that's been marked by some of DC's strongest new titles in years, from Black Canary to Prez, the first digital chapter of Bombshells came out swinging and knocked it out of the park with what might just be the best first issue of the bunch.

When I hear the word "superhero," the image that pops into my head looks an awful lot like the way Chris Sprouse draws his characters. The clean lines, the heroic proportions, the larger-than-life action and adventure that go along with it, those are all things that Sprouse has mastered in a career that spans three decades.

Today, July 30, marks his birthday and that means it's an even better time than it usually is to celebrate his work.

I've never liked the Transformers. The franchise didn't get its hooks into me as a kid, and while I've tried to give it a shot as an adult, it never really clicked. But now, with a recommendation from almost everyone I know and a well-timed Humble Bundle sale that left me with three years worth (and counting) of IDW's More Than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise comics, I'm going on a quest to see if these comics can turn me from someone who has never cared at all about Optimus Prime into someone who uses words like "Cybertron" and "alt-mode" with alarming regularity. And Primus help me, it's working.

This week, we're heading back to 2011 for "Chaos Theory" and the first meeting of Optimus Prime and Megatron!

The Humble Bundle's biweekly book sales have become a bit of a risky proposition for people on the lookout for cheap comics. On the one hand, you can get a whole bunch of stuff for whatever price you want to pay, with more content unlocked at a still-pretty-low price of $15, and you get to support a charity while you're at it. On the other hand, sometimes you end up reading a bunch of Transformers comics for the next six months.

Really, though, it's almost always worth looking into, and the bundle that launched this week is no exception. The theme is comics based on music, and for $15, you can grab the first volume of The Wicked + The Divine, Phonogram, Nowhere Men, Hip Hop Family Tree, and more.

Today marks the birthday of Dave Stevens, who is, without question, one of the greatest artists in the history of comic books. Best known for creating the Rocketeer --- and for the sexy, pinup-inspired art that made him a fan favorite and helped spark the revival of interest in Bettie Page --- Stevens had a career that was marked by amazing projects, including work doing storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark and the music video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller," two of the biggest pop culture phenomena of the '80s. It's in comics, though, that he made his biggest mark.

Tragically, Stevens died in 2008, but he left behind an amazing legacy of stories of high adventure, romance, and action, which holds up over thirty years later as innovative, compelling, and absolutely beautiful.

When the DC Universe came out of Convergence, one of the biggest changes came from Superman. Not only was the Man of Steel back in the t-shirt and jeans look that he was rocking back at the start of the New 52, but his secret identity as Clark Kent had been exposed, leaving new writer Gene Luen Yang and returning artist John Romita Jr. to explain just how that went down.

It's a big change in the status quo, so to find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke to Yang about taking on the world's first superhero, collaborating with one of his favorite artists, and changing the dynamics between Clark, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane.

Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa's Kickstarter campaign for ABC Disgusting has been pretty steady with providing stretch goals ever since they made their initial funding a while back, including the very tempting offer to get Pak himself to eat and drink super-gross stuff inspired by the book. Very, very tempting. Look into it.

If, however, you're not into seeing the writer of Action Comics make himself sick with a mayonnaise milkshake, there's another goal they announced today that might be a little more palatable: An illustrated chapter book about the stars of ABC Disgusting going on a hunt for giant monsters called Kaiju Clubhouse.

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